Books: Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich

L >> Leacock, Stephen, 1869 1944 >> Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich

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* * * * * * *

"By Jove! Miss Furlong, how awfully good of you to come
down!"

The little suburban train--two cars only, both first
class, for the train went nowhere except out into the
primeval wilderness--had drawn up at the diminutive
roadside station. Mr. Spillikins had alighted, and there
was Miss Philippa Furlong sitting behind the chauffeur
in the Newberrys' motor. She was looking as beautiful as
only the younger sister of a High Church episcopalian
rector can look, dressed in white, the colour of
saintliness, on a beautiful morning in July.

There was no doubt about Philippa Furlong. Her beauty
was of that peculiar and almost sacred kind found only
in the immediate neighbourhood of the High Church clergy.
It was admitted by all who envied or admired her that
she could enter a church more gracefully, move more
swimmingly up the aisle, and pray better than any girl
on Plutoria Avenue.

Mr. Spillikins, as he gazed at her in her white summer
dress and wide picture hat, with her parasol nodding
above her head, realized that after all, religion, as
embodied in the younger sisters of the High Church clergy,
fills a great place in the world.

"By Jove!" he repeated, "how awfully good of you!"

"Not a bit," said Philippa. "Hop in. Dulphemia was coming,
but she couldn't. Is that all you have with you?"

The last remark was ironical. It referred to the two
quite large steamer trunks of Mr. Spillikins that were
being loaded, together with his suit-case, tennis racket,
and golf kit, on to the fore part of the motor. Mr.
Spillikins, as a young man of social experience, had
roughed it before. He knew what a lot of clothes one
needs for it.

So the motor sped away, and went bowling noiselessly over
the oiled road, and turning corners where the green boughs
of the great trees almost swished in their faces, and
rounding and twisting among curves of the hills as it
carried Spillikins and Philippa away from the lower domain
or ordinary fields and farms up into the enchanted country
of private property and the magic castles of Casteggio
and Penny-gw-rydd.

Mr. Spillikins must have assured Philippa at least a
dozen times in starting off how awfully good it was of
her to come down in the motor; and he was so pleased at
her coming to meet him that Philippa never even hinted
that the truth was that she had expected somebody else
on the same train. For to a girl brought up in the
principles of the High Church the truth is a very sacred
thing. She keeps it to herself.

And naturally, with such a sympathetic listener, it was
not long before Mr. Spillikins had begun to talk of
Dulphemia and his hopes.

"I don't know whether she really cares for me or not,"
said Mr. Spillikins, "but I have pretty good hope. The
other day, or at least about two months ago, at one of
the Yahi-Bahi meetings--you were not in that, were you?"
he said breaking off.

"Only just at the beginning," said Philippa; "we went to
Bermuda."

"Oh yes, I remember. Do you know, I thought it pretty
rough at the end, especially on Ram Spudd. I liked him.
I sent him two pounds of tobacco to the penitentiary last
week; you can get it in to them, you know, if you know
how."

"But what were you going to say?" asked Philippa.

"Oh yes," said Mr. Spillikins. And he realized that he
had actually drifted off the topic of Dulphemia, a thing
that had never happened to him before. "I was going to
say that at one of the meetings, you know, I asked her
if I might call her Dulphemia."

"And what did she say to that?" asked Philippa.

"She said she didn't care what I called her. So I think
that looks pretty good, don't you?"

"Awfully good," said Philippa.

"And a little after that I took her slippers home from
the Charity Ball at the Grand Palaver. Archie Jones took
her home herself in his car, but I took her slippers.
She'd forgotten them. I thought that a pretty good sign,
wasn't it? You wouldn't let a chap carry round your
slippers unless you knew him pretty well, would you, Miss
Philippa?"

"Oh no, nobody would," said Philippa. This of course,
was a standing principle of the Anglican Church.

"And a little after that Dulphemia and Charlie Mostyn
and I were walking to Mrs. Buncomhearst's musical, and
we'd only just started along the street, when she stopped
and sent me back for her music--me, mind you, not Charlie.
That seems to me awfully significant."

"It seems to speak volumes," said Philippa.

"Doesn't it?" said Mr. Spillikins. "You don't mind my
telling you all about this Miss Philippa?" he added.

Incidentally Mr. Spillikins felt that it was all right
to call her Miss Philippa, because she had a sister who
was really Miss Furlong, so it would have been quite
wrong, as Mr. Spillikins realized, to have called Miss
Philippa by her surname. In any case, the beauty of the
morning was against it.

"I don't mind a bit," said Philippa. "I think it's awfully
nice of you to tell me about it."

She didn't add that she knew all about it already.

"You see," said Mr. Spillikins, "you're so awfully
sympathetic. It makes it so easy to talk to you. With
other girls, especially with clever ones, even with
Dulphemia. I often feel a perfect jackass beside them.
But I don t feel that way with you at all."

"Don't you really?" said Philippa, but the honest admiration
in Mr. Spillikin's protruding blue eyes forbade a sarcastic
answer.

"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins presently, with complete
irrelevance, "I hope you don't mind my saying it, but
you look awfully well in white--stunning." He felt that
a man who was affianced, or practically so, was allowed
the smaller liberty of paying honest compliments.

"Oh, this old thing," laughed Philippa, with a contemptuous
shake of her dress. "But up here, you know, we just wear
anything." She didn't say that this old thing was only
two weeks old and had cost eighty dollars, or the equivalent
of one person's pew rent at St. Asaph's for six months.

And after that they had only time, so it seemed to Mr.
Spillikins, for two or three remarks, and he had scarcely
had leisure to reflect what a charming girl Philippa had
grown to be since she went to Bermuda--the effect, no
doubt, of the climate of those fortunate islands--when
quite suddenly they rounded a curve into an avenue of
nodding trees, and there were the great lawn and wide
piazzas and the conservatories of Castel Casteggio right
in front of them.

"Here we are," said Philippa, "and there's Mr. Newberry
out on the lawn."

* * * * * * *

"Now, here," Mr. Newberry was saying a little later,
waving his hand, "is where you get what I think the finest
view of the place."

He was standing at the corner of the lawn where it sloped,
dotted with great trees, to the banks of the little lake,
and was showing Mr. Spillikins the beauties of Castel
Casteggio.

Mr. Newberry wore on his short circular person the summer
costume of a man taking his ease and careless of dress:
plain white flannel trousers, not worth more than six
dollars a leg, an ordinary white silk shirt with a rolled
collar, that couldn't have cost more than fifteen dollars,
and on his head an ordinary Panama hat, say forty dollars.

"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins, as he looked about him
at the house and the beautiful lawn with its great trees,
"it's a lovely place."

"Isn't it?" said Mr. Newberry. "But you ought to have
seen it when I took hold of it. To make the motor road
alone I had to dynamite out about a hundred yards of
rock, and then I fetched up cement, tons and tons of it,
and boulders to buttress the embankment."

"Did you really!" said Mr. Spillikins, looking at Mr.
Newberry with great respect.

"Yes, and even that was nothing to the house itself. Do
you know, I had to go at least forty feet for the
foundations. First I went through about twenty feet of
loose clay, after that I struck sand, and I'd no sooner
got through that than, by George! I landed in eight feet
of water. I had to pump it out; I think I took out a
thousand gallons before I got clear down to the rock.
Then I took my solid steel beams in fifty-foot lengths,"
here Mr. Newberry imitated with his arms the action of
a man setting up a steel beam, "and set them upright and
bolted them on the rock. After that I threw my steel
girders across, clapped on my roof rafters, all steel,
in sixty-foot pieces, and then just held it easily, just
supported it a bit, and let it sink gradually to its
place."

Mr. Newberry illustrated with his two arms the action of
a huge house being allowed to sink slowly to a firm rest.

"You don't say so!" said Mr. Spillikins, lost in amazement
at the wonderful physical strength that Mr. Newberry must
have.

"Excuse me just a minute," broke off Mr. Newberry, "while
I smooth out the gravel where you're standing. You've
rather disturbed it, I'm afraid."

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spillikins.

"Oh, not at all, not at all," said his host. "I don't
mind in the least. It's only on account of McAlister."

"Who?" asked Mr. Spillikins.

"My gardener. He doesn't care to have us walk on the
gravel paths. It scuffs up the gravel so. But sometimes
one forgets."

It should be said here, for the sake of clearness, that
one of the chief glories of Castel Casteggio lay in its
servants. All of them, it goes without saying, had been
brought from Great Britain. The comfort they gave to Mr.
and Mrs. Newberry was unspeakable. In fact, as they
themselves admitted, servants of the kind are simply not
to be found in America.

"Our Scotch gardener," Mrs. Newberry always explained
"is a perfect character. I don't know how we could get
another like him. Do you know, my dear, he simply won't
allow us to pick the roses; and if any of us walk across
the grass he is furious. And he positively refuses to
let us use the vegetables. He told me quite plainly that
if we took any of his young peas or his early cucumbers
he would leave. We are to have them later on when he's
finished growing them."

"How delightful it is to have servants of that sort,"
the lady addressed would murmur; "so devoted and so
different from servants on this side of the water. Just
imagine, my dear, my chauffeur, when I was in Colorado,
actually threatened to leave me merely because I wanted
to reduce his wages. I think it's these wretched labour
unions."

"I'm sure it is. Of course we have trouble with McAlister
at times, but he's always very reasonable when we put
things in the right light. Last week, for example, I was
afraid that we had gone too far with him. He is always
accustomed to have a quart of beer every morning at
half-past ten--the maids are told to bring it out to him,
and after that he goes to sleep in the little arbour
beside the tulip bed. And the other day when he went
there he found that one of our guests who hadn't been
told, was actually sitting in there reading. Of course
he was _furious_. I was afraid for the moment that he would
give notice on the spot."

"What _would_ you have done?"

"Positively, my dear, I don't know. But we explained to
him at once that it was only an accident and that the
person hadn't known and that of course it wouldn't occur
again. After that he was softened a little, but he went
off muttering to himself, and that evening he dug up all
the new tulips and threw them over the fence. We saw him
do it, but we didn't dare say anything."

"Oh no," echoed the other lady; "if you had you might
have lost him."

"Exactly. And I don't think we could possibly get another
man like him; at least, not on this side of the water."

* * * * * * *

"But come," said Mr. Newberry, after he had finished
adjusting the gravel with his foot, "there are Mrs.
Newberry and the girls on the verandah. Let's go and join
them."

A few minutes later Mr. Spillikins was talking with Mrs.
Newberry and Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown, and telling Mrs.
Newberry what a beautiful house she had. Beside them
stood Philippa Furlong, and she had her arm around
Dulphemia's waist; and the picture that they thus made,
with their heads close together, Dulphemia's hair being
golden and Philippa's chestnut-brown, was such that Mr.
Spillikins had no eyes for Mrs. Newberry nor for Castel
Casteggio nor for anything. So much so that he practically
didn't see at all the little girl in green that stood
unobtrusively on the further side of Mrs. Newberry.
Indeed, though somebody had murmured her name in
introduction, he couldn't have repeated it if asked two
minutes afterwards. His eyes and his mind were elsewhere.

But hers were not.

For the Little Girl in Green looked at Mr. Spillikins
with wide eyes, and when she looked at him she saw all
at once such wonderful things about him as nobody had
ever seen before.

For she could see from the poise of his head how awfully
clever he was; and from the way he stood with his hands
in his side pockets she could see how manly and brave he
must be; and of course there was firmness and strength
written all over him. In short, she saw as she looked
such a Peter Spillikins as truly never existed, or could
exist--or at least such a Peter Spillikins as no one else
in the world had ever suspected before.

All in a moment she was ever so glad that she accepted
Mrs. Newberry's invitation to Castel Casteggio and hadn't
been afraid to come. For the Little Girl in Green, whose
Christian name was Norah, was only what is called a poor
relation of Mrs. Newberry, and her father was a person
of no account whatever, who didn't belong to the Mausoleum
Club or to any other club, and who lived, with Norah, on
a street that nobody who was anybody lived upon. Norah
had been asked up a few days before out of the City to
give her air--which is the only thing that can be safely
and freely given to poor relations. Thus she had arrived
at Castel Casteggio with one diminutive trunk, so small
and shabby that even the servants who carried it upstairs
were ashamed of it. In it were a pair of brand new tennis
shoes (at ninety cents reduced to seventy-five) and a
white dress of the kind that is called "almost evening,"
and such few other things as poor relations might bring
with fear and trembling to join in the simple rusticity
of the rich.

Thus stood Norah looking at Mr. Spillikins.

As for him, such is the contrariety of human things, he
had no eyes for her at all.

"What a perfectly charming house this is," Mr. Spillikins
was saying. He always said this on such occasions, but
it seemed to the Little Girl in Green that he spoke with
wonderful social ease.

"I am so glad you think so," said Mrs. Newberry (this
was what she always answered); "you've no idea what work
it has been. This year we put in all this new glass in
the east conservatory, over a thousand panes. Such a
tremendous business!"

"I was just telling Mr. Spillikins," said Mr. Newberry,
"about the work we had blasting out the motor road. You
can see the gap where it lies better from here, I think,
Spillikins. I must have exploded a ton and a half of
dynamite on it."

"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins; "it must be dangerous
work eh? I wonder you aren't afraid of it."

"One simply gets used to it, that's all," said Newberry,
shrugging his shoulders; "but of course it is dangerous.
I blew up two Italians on the last job." He paused a
minute and added musingly, "Hardy fellows, the Italians.
I prefer them to any other people for blasting."

"Did you blow them up yourself?" asked Mr. Spillikins.

"I wasn't here," answered Mr. Newberry. "In fact, I never
care to be here when I'm blasting. We go to town. But I
had to foot the bill for them all the same. Quite right,
too. The risk, of course, was mine, not theirs; that's
the law, you know. They cost me two thousand each."

"But come," said Mrs. Newberry, "I think we must go and
dress for dinner. Franklin will be frightfully put out
if we're late. Franklin is our butler," she went on,
seeing that Mr. Spillikins didn't understand the reference,
"and as we brought him out from England we have to be
rather careful. With a good man like Franklin one is
always so afraid of losing him--and after last night we
have to be doubly careful."

"Why last night?" asked Mr. Spillikins.

"Oh, it wasn't much," said Mrs. Newberry. "In fact, it
was merely an accident. Only it just chanced that at
dinner, quite late in the meal, when we had had nearly
everything (we dine very simply here, Mr. Spillikins),
Mr. Newberry, who was thirsty and who wasn't really
thinking what he was saying, asked Franklin to give him
a glass of hock. Franklin said at once, 'I'm very sorry,
sir, I don't care to serve hock after the entree!'"

"And of course he was right," said Dulphemia with emphasis.
"Exactly; he was perfectly right. They know, you know.
We were afraid that there might be trouble, but Mr.
Newberry went and saw Franklin afterwards and he behaved
very well over it. But suppose we go and dress? It's
half-past six already and we've only an hour."

* * * * * * *

In this congenial company Mr. Spillikins spent the next
three days.

Life at Castel Casteggio, as the Newberrys loved to
explain, was conducted on the very simplest plan. Early
breakfast, country fashion, at nine o'clock; after that
nothing to eat till lunch, unless one cared to have
lemonade or bottled ale sent out with a biscuit or a
macaroon to the tennis court. Lunch itself was a perfectly
plain midday meal, lasting till about 1.30, and consisting
simply of cold meats (say four kinds) and salads, with
perhaps a made dish or two, and, for anybody who cared
for it, a hot steak or a chop, or both. After that one
had coffee and cigarettes in the shade of the piazza and
waited for afternoon tea. This latter was served at a
wicker table in any part of the grounds that the gardener
was not at that moment clipping, trimming, or otherwise
using. Afternoon tea being over, one rested or walked on
the lawn till it was time to dress for dinner.

This simple routine was broken only by irruptions of
people in motors or motor boats from Penny-gw-rydd or
Yodel-Dudel Chalet.

The whole thing, from the point of view of Mr. Spillikins
or Dulphemia or Philippa, represented rusticity itself.

To the Little Girl in Green it seemed as brilliant as
the Court of Versailles; especially evening dinner--a
plain home meal as the others thought it--when she had
four glasses to drink out of and used to wonder over such
problems as whether you were supposed, when Franklin
poured out wine, to tell him to stop or to wait till he
stopped without being told to stop; and other similar
mysteries, such as many people before and after have
meditated upon.

During all this time Mr. Spillikins was nerving himself
to propose to Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown. In fact, he
spent part of his time walking up and down under the
trees with Philippa Furlong and discussing with her the
proposal that he meant to make, together with such topics
as marriage in general and his own unworthiness.

He might have waited indefinitely had he not learned,
on the third day of his visit, that Dulphemia was to go
away in the morning to join her father at Nagahakett.

That evening he found the necessary nerve to speak, and
the proposal in almost every aspect of it was most
successful.

"By Jove!" Spillikins said to Philippa Furlong next
morning, in explaining what had happened, "she was awfully
nice about it. I think she must have guessed, in a way,
don't you, what I was going to say? But at any rate she
was awfully nice--let me say everything I wanted, and
when I explained what a fool I was, she said she didn't
think I was half such a fool as people thought me. But
it's all right. It turns out that she isn't thinking of
getting married. I asked her if I might always go on
thinking of her, and she said I might."

And that morning when Dulphemia was carried off in the
motor to the station, Mr. Spillikins, without exactly
being aware how he had done it, had somehow transferred
himself to Philippa.

"Isn't she a splendid girl!" he said at least ten times
a day to Norah, the Little Girl in Green. And Norah always
agreed, because she really thought Philippa a perfectly
wonderful creature. There is no doubt that, but for a
slight shift of circumstances, Mr. Spillikins would have
proposed to Miss Furlong. Indeed, he spent a good part
of his time rehearsing little speeches that began, "Of
course I know I'm an awful ass in a way," or, "Of course
I know that I'm not at all the sort of fellow," and so
on.

But not one of them ever was delivered.

For it so happened that on the Thursday, one week after
Mr. Spillikins's arrival, Philippa went again to the
station in the motor. And when she came back there was
another passenger with her, a tall young man in tweed,
and they both began calling out to the Newberrys from a
distance of at least a hundred yards.

And both the Newberrys suddenly exclaimed, "Why, it's
Tom!" and rushed off to meet the motor. And there was
such a laughing and jubilation as the two descended and
carried Tom's valises to the verandah, that Mr. Spillikins
felt as suddenly and completely out of it as the Little
Girl in Green herself--especially as his ear had caught,
among the first things said, the words, "Congratulate
us, Mrs. Newberry, we're engaged."

After which Mr. Spillikins had the pleasure of sitting
and listening while it was explained in wicker chairs on
the verandah, that Philippa and Tom had been engaged
already for ever so long--in fact, nearly two weeks, only
they had agreed not to say a word to anybody till Tom
had gone to North Carolina and back, to see his people.

And as to who Tom was, or what was the relation between
Tom and the Newberrys, Mr. Spillikins neither knew or
cared; nor did it interest him in the least that Philippa
had met Tom in Bermuda, and that she hadn't known that
he even knew the Newberry's nor any other of the exuberant
disclosures of the moment. In fact, if there was any one
period rather than another when Mr. Spillikins felt
corroborated in his private view of himself, it was at
this moment.

So the next day Tom and Philippa vanished together.

"We shall be quite a small party now," said Mrs. Newberry;
"in fact, quite by ourselves till Mrs. Everleigh comes,
and she won't be here for a fortnight."

At which the heart of the Little Girl in Green was glad,
because she had been afraid that other girls might be
coming, whereas she knew that Mrs. Everleigh was a widow
with four sons and must be ever so old, past forty.

The next few days were spent by Mr. Spillikins almost
entirely in the society of Norah. He thought them on the
whole rather pleasant days, but slow. To her they were
an uninterrupted dream of happiness never to be forgotten.

The Newberrys left them to themselves; not with any
intent; it was merely that they were perpetually busy
walking about the grounds of Castel Casteggio, blowing
up things with dynamite, throwing steel bridges over
gullies, and hoisting heavy timber with derricks. Nor
were they to blame for it. For it had not always been
theirs to command dynamite and control the forces of
nature. There had been a time, now long ago, when the
two Newberrys had lived, both of them, on twenty dollars
a week, and Mrs. Newberry had made her own dresses, and
Mr. Newberry had spent vigorous evenings in making
hand-made shelves for their sitting-room. That was long
ago, and since then Mr. Newberry, like many other people
of those earlier days, had risen to wealth and Castel
Casteggio, while others, like Norah's father, had stayed
just where they were.

So the Newberrys left Peter and Norah to themselves all
day. Even after dinner, in the evening, Mr. Newberry was
very apt to call to his wife in the dusk from some distant
corner of the lawn:

"Margaret, come over here and tell me if you don't think
we might cut down this elm, tear the stump out by the
roots, and throw it into the ravine."

And the answer was, "One minute, Edward; just wait till
I get a wrap."

Before they came back, the dusk had grown to darkness,
and they had redynamited half the estate.

During all of which time Mr. Spillikins sat with Norah
on the piazza. He talked and she listened. He told her,
for instance, all about his terrific experiences in the
oil business, and about his exciting career at college;
or presently they went indoors and Norah played the piano
and Mr. Spillikins sat and smoked and listened. In such
a house as the Newberry's, where dynamite and the greater
explosives were everyday matters, a little thing like
the use of tobacco in the drawing-room didn't count. As
for the music, "Go right ahead," said Mr. Spillikins;
"I'm not musical, but I don't mind music a bit."

In the daytime they played tennis. There was a court at
one end of the lawn beneath the trees, all chequered with
sunlight and mingled shadow; very beautiful, Norah thought,
though Mr. Spillikins explained that the spotted light
put him off his game. In fact, it was owing entirely to
this bad light that Mr. Spillikins's fast drives, wonderful
though they were, somehow never got inside the service
court.

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